Emilia & Documents Essay

genus genus genus Emilia is only a secondary roughage in the play only when her share is crucial one. Though she is wife of Iago, she is ignorant of the real temper of his plots and she even aids his designs without any awareness of their consequences on one side. On the other side, she is coarse-minded, earthy save devotedly attached to her mistress. So Shakespeare portrays her in a realistic light, attributing to her strengths and weaknesses, combining in her character the qualities of loyalty and service, with a commitment besides to the more(prenominal) worldly side of human nature.Shakespeare alike uses her as toll to carry out the malicious motives and evil designs of Iago. She also acts as a crucify to Desdemona. Her being a companion to Desdemona enables her to breach not only her own wide experience of the world but also to highlight Desdemonas innocence and idealism. The commonsensical realism of Emilia provides a refreshing contrast to Desdemonas unpractical ide alism. Emilia is a cleaning fair sex of the world and her understanding of the real nature of men and their affairs is more realistic and mature than that of Desdemona.In this respect she serves as a foil to throw into sharp relief the childlike nature of her mistress. For example, while Desdemona opines that at that place are no women in the world who would play false to their husbands, Emilia k straightaways that there are many such Yes a dozen and, as many the vantage as would/ store the world they played for. (IV. iii. 82-83) She changes on the whole over the course of the play from a passive Elizabethan domestic charwoman to an active and dynamic character who fully endorses the chastity of her mistress and protests over the unfair and rude behavior of Othello toward her.She remains silent in the depression half of the play like a typical Elizabethan woman who solemnly accepts all the pathos and miseries of life afflicted upon her by her husbands. Her very(prenominal ) outset dialogue in the play indicates the matrimonial and domestic action she was suffering from. Her response to Iagos comments I find it still, when I squander list to sleep /Marry, before your ladyship, I grant, /She puts her tongue a subatomic in her heart, /And chides with thinking. (II. i.891-894) She says, You keep up little cause to say so (II. i. 895). Adamson is of the encounter that She knows. . . . it is less painful to suffer his scornful abuse than to challenge and estimate to change him (247). So her silence and so short a do is tool to hide herself in her own cocoon and an agonizing credit of triviality in the domestic sphere. Her silence is due to the complexity of the dapple in which she is entangled as Iagos wife and Desdemonas intimate.This produces in her paradoxical emotions about one or the other. The female connection among Desdemona and Emilia demonstrates a level of personal intimacy that is free of the original distinctions in the male relati onships, but is complicated by class distinctions and compromised by Emilias divided loyalty as Iagos wife and Desdemonas serving lady (Nostbakken 21). So Iago exploits this role of Emilia. In the first place it is she who provides Iago with the handkerchief which he puts to such a terrible use.solely she should be blamed for the tragedy as she makes matters more complicated when she professes ignorance as Desdemona asks her whether she knows where she could have dropped her handkerchief. In both these instances, Emilia is culpable, but it may be said in her defense that she is quite unaware of committing anything more than a minor violation of verity. So her silence is not a turn silence and audience understands it that it is due to her subservience to social norms that force her to get along more as Iagos wife than Desdemonas maid.Whenever she becomes more vocal, it is owed to her sack out for her mistress. Toward the end of the play she emerges as a changed individual who has broken low the shackles of conventionalities, social compulsion and accepted behaviors. Her emotional attachment to Desdemona overpowers her alter in the play. Emilias stout defense of Desdemona proves futile because Othello decides to regard her as Desdemonas bawd. However, Emilia has other functions in the play.At the death of Desdemona she mat herself very much melancholy stricken Villainy, hatred, villainy /I think upont I think smellt O villainy /I thought so then I ll kill myself for grief/ O villainy, villainy (V. ii. 191-194) When she once realizes that her husband used the handkerchief to imply her mistress, she condemns and exposes him without fear although she loses her life in doing so Good gentleman, let me have leave to speak,/Tis proper I obey him, but not now/ Perchance, Iago.I volition neer go home. (V. ii. 196-198) M. R. Ridley believes that in all the plays there is nothing more characteristic of Shakespeare than the way in which Desdemonas death kindles in her (Emilia) a bright flame of self-forgetful courageousness it is not just that she faces the threats of both Othello and her husband(Iago), but rather that she neglects them, brushes them aside as irrelevant trivialities. (46)Emilia may be said to represent the popular people who commonly figure in Shakespeare, people who are not extraordinarily virtuous in daily life, but who are skilful with a reasonable perceptiveness and commonsense and are capable of courage in times of crisis. Her complete break comes with the resolution to reveal the truth when she says Twill out, twill out I peace /No, I will speak as liberal as the north (V. ii. 3561-62)And her disclosure O thou dull Moorthat handkerchief thou speakst of /I found by fortune and did give my husband(V. ii. 3570-71) A. C. Bradley remarks about this transformation Till close to the end she frequently sets ones teething on edge and at the end one is ready to righteousness her (p. 205). The only character to perform a complete transformation of character over the course of Othellos action, Emilia progresses rapidly from her early role as coarse and subservient foil) to Iago(as depicted earlier) into a resolute and efficient defender of Desdemonas virtue.Works CitedAdamson, Jane. Othello as tragedy some problems of discernment and feeling. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1980 Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean tragedy lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London Macmillan. 1971 Nostbakken, Faith. Understanding Othello, A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 2000. Ridley, M. R. Othello. Cambridge Harvard University Press. 1958.